


New Constellations

by butterpanic



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, F/M, Fictober 2018, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 12:20:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22207000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/butterpanic/pseuds/butterpanic
Summary: A galaxy full of stars and each of them just a hair off of a perfect shine.
Relationships: Akaavi Spar & Mako, Corso Riggs/Female Smuggler, Female Jedi Knight | Hero of Tython/Archiban "Doc" Kimble, Lana Beniko/Female Imperial Agent | Cipher Nine, Malavai Quinn/Female Sith Warrior
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	1. Akaavi Spar & Mako

**Author's Note:**

> Fills for Fictober 18. Yes, in 2020. I like them well aged?
> 
> Multiple pairings, all indicated in the chapter title. Rating varies. Tags will be added as needed.
> 
> * * *
> 
> 01 | “Can you feel this?”

“Leave me alone.” The zabrak tries to stand - to be honest, she shouldn’t even be _sitting_ \- but Mako bats her warding hands away to keep poking at the bloody mess on her side. Kolto patch won’t exactly fix that, but it means she might not die on the way to stoically refusing more medical treatment. **  
**

“Tough son of a Hutt, huh?” Sure, she’d shown up after the bounty had reached the “trophy” stage, but he must’ve been while he was still breathing, because Mako can’t quite imagine the woman before her being laid out by anything less.

Only silence answers.

So she’s missed a payout. She should mind that more now that she’s solo, because protein packs and transport tickets don’t exactly buy themselves and it turns out you don’t get the Grand Champion discount if you can’t actually _produce_ the Grand Champion on demand, but there’s a code and all.

“I do not need your assistance,” the woman insists, which would be way more believable if she wasn’t leaking out all her vital fluids in a grungy warehouse on Nar Shaddaa.

Maybe that would even work on some other ordinary bounty hunter but Mako’s wheedled Torian all the way into a medbay several times before so she’s feeling pretty unmoved. You just have to be more stubborn, is all, and sometimes get out of the way in case a ton of Mandalorian decides to faint on top of you in full armor.

(Not faint, of course. Never. Just a momentary disruption of gravity.)

“I promise not to help much,” Mako says, following the kolto patch with the sharp jab of a stim. “Feel free to limp out of here in triumph.”

“ _Vor entye_.”

“ _Wer'cuy_.”

That gets a reaction, if only a brief flutter of her eyelids. Mako gets it. Most people don’t get a crash course in Mando'a while running for their lives in a stolen junker, but then again most people don’t do half the stuff Mako’s done, and she’s barely old enough to rent a speeder instead of stealing it.

“Akaavi Spar.”

It takes a minute to figure out that’s a name and not something dirty Torian never taught her.

“Mako.” She shoves out a hand; ignored, as expected.

Akaavi, huh. Makes Torian seem downright chatty.

“Gotta say,” Mako ventures - not entirely because she’s not sure if the immovable chunk of woman inside this larger immovable chunk of _beskar_ has passed out from blood loss but also a fair amount because that particular chunk is about a shade off from pink with her eyes closed - “you’re taking this rescuing thing way better than I thought you would.”

A crack. A sliver of green, rimmed in red.

“You remind me of someone.”

Then she faints.


	2. Female Sith Warrior/Malavai Quinn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 02 | "People like you have no imagination."

Any successful plan can and should compensate for error. Minor and catastrophic; each considered, each contained. This plan, depending on scope and definition, has already dealt with both. **  
**

Shouldn’t have hesitated here, should have adjusted a briefing there. Shouldn’t have married her. Shouldn’t have fallen in love, just to complicate that last error.

Malavai Quinn has lived a life between these calculations. Even as a boy he saw them, understood them. He grew into a man who knew how to read them well enough to shoot his way up the ranks, a rising star.

It was a calculation that sent him to Balmorra, too. Thousands of lives against one promising career.

He’s wondered if he’d still make it now. He hopes, but he doesn’t believe.

His wife- 

-his lord is a known quantity. (Inasmuch as any person can be, those shaky organic variables.) The woman he has come to admire, to adore; she can be generalized, be accounted for. For every action, her reaction. An observation and a conclusion.

In conclusion:

She was strong but Baras was stronger, surely. She was capable, intelligent, but she lacked Baras’ fury, his will to succeed. She dispatched her foes evenly and without anger. She negotiated and gave ground when none was required. He respected that dispassionate distance but even he, blinded with ill-advised lust as he was, knew that this wasn’t what it took to become a formidable power among the Sith. To survive.

Her defeat at Baras’ hands was inevitable.

Here, he faces his greatest miscalculation:

His lord has been holding back.

She’s glorious, ringed in fire and shining in anger. The air around her shimmers with it, red and pulsing and screaming. It presses against his cheeks and pounds across the drums of his ears as she slams him effortlessly against the bulkhead. Once, twice, vision murky as a hand wraps smoothly around his throat, tensing for the snap.

Baras doesn’t stand a chance. He has never been so terrified.

Here, in the moment of his death, he is more in love with her than he has ever been before.

“I had hoped you’d be different.” A pause. “I don’t know why I did.”

Then like a candle snuffed, her power releases him and he falls to the deck in a heap, gasping.

She doesn’t even cast a glance over her shoulder as she goes.


	3. Female Jedi Knight/Doc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 06 | "I heard enough, this ends now."

“How long are you going to keep this up?”

Roden’s eyes are on the datapad in front of him but it’s not hard to guess who that’s directed to, seeing as Doc is the only other person in the mess. He just had to grab a glass of water, didn’t he? Could’ve been back in his cot in the medbay already, pretending he’d been there dutifully studying all night with none the wiser.

He really loves her. Enough to sleep better when she’s there. Enough that he’d rather get half the night than none of it. Enough to sneak around in his socks at no-one’s-awake-but-the-droid-hundred like he’s just climbed out of the constable’s daughter’s window.

If Roden had only listened to his doctor and taken those sleep aids he’d prescribed, he wouldn’t be in this mess right now. Really, it’s his fault.

Jedi hubris.

“Look, I know you Jedi aren’t hot on the whole, uh, physical thing-”

“Not that,” Roden says, cutting him off with a wave of his hand. “This. The whole sneaking around thing. It’s ridiculous. You’re not fooling anyone.”

Doc’s mouth goes suddenly dry. Must really need that glass of water. Nothing more.

“The Jedi don’t… well, they’re not actually _encouraging_ of the ‘physical thing’, per se.” He clears his throat, clearly uncomfortable. With the subject or the object, can’t tell. “But they don’t care enough for you to be waking us up every night.”

Wait. Jedi can’t sense that, right? They’ve been so careful, she’d have told him if they could. Wouldn’t she? Doc’s got the sudden urge to review every weird look Kira’s given him in the past month. Tough job, since she never seems to give him anything else.

Roden must read it on his face because he earns an eye roll over the rim of his cup of caf.

“You sneak around like a three-legged bantha, Doc. A drunk one. Is there a single deck panel of this ship you haven’t stumbled over in the dark?”

“I didn’t realize I was that loud.”

“Every time you stub your toe on that last stair Teeseven forwards me another scholarly essay on the dangers of attachment. I don’t care if staying the night isn’t how you do things, please consider it. For all our sakes.” A thoughtful look, wrapped up in that smug Jedi calm. “Or buy a headlamp.”

Staying the night isn’t how he does things. Right. Because he’s Doc Kimble, ladies’ man, the love 'em (and love 'em, and love 'em - nothing wrong with a little pride in your work) and leave 'em kind. For this to work at all he has to let them believe that, let her use his reputation as a shield.

(Someday, he promises, he will take her somewhere no one knows her face. Somewhere with a beach, and drinks with little umbrellas. They’ll lay out in the sun and sip around the little umbrellas and he will tell everyone he sees that he loves his beautiful wife her until she forces him to stop.)

“Right. I’ll take it under advisement. Won’t hear another peep from me.”

Roden nods, already absorbed back into whatever’s on his datapad. Nothing important, he’d guess. Those dark circles get darker every day. Maybe he’ll send another friendly doctor’s reminder about the sleep aids tomorrow.

He’s not looking forward to telling her about this.

* * *

The conversation had gone well. At least, he’d thought the conversation had gone well, but now that he’s here standing awkwardly next to the conference table while the silence stretches, he realizes that they’d been approaching it from two vastly different directions. Two different planets, maybe, because when he’d heard, “I think we should stop hiding,” he’d assumed a quiet word here and there. Something subtle.

What his wife had intended, apparently, was calling the entire crew into a meeting and opening with,

“Doc and I are married. We have been for months. We would appreciate if you do not share this with the Council. I will accept no more questions.”

To Roden’s credit, he doesn’t drop his mug of caf. Looks close, though, and he doesn’t seem to realize his mouth is open mid-sip.

“Ha! Knew the Master Perfect thing was just an act.” Kira’s the first to break the silence. Of course she is. “But Doc? Really? You’d break the Code for that?”

Doesn’t take a Jedi to read the room now. Vadi’s lips thin and oooh, yeah, he’ll be dealing with that one for awhile. Two steps forward, one step back. Well, he knew what he was getting into, hitching his wagon to a Jedi who’d needed more than a little convincing on the hitching part.

The Sith looks even more sour than usual. “Congratulations. You have defied the pointless rules of your order. I look forward to your next announcement of little consequence.”

If the whole 'killing the Emperor’ thing doesn’t work out, that man has a bright future writing hologreetings.

Vadi strides from the room faster than he can hope to match. Those long legs are a blessing and a curse - the blessing obvious, the curse being stuck in an open doorway for endless minutes receiving Rusk’s earnest well wishes as Kira and Roden shift uncomfortably nearby, clearly wishing to leave but even more clearly wishing that they didn’t have to walk by him to do so. Teeseven nearly runs over his feet, rotating his dome to glare at him in an unbroken 180 degrees as he darkly beeps his way down the corridor.

So, it could’ve gone better.

Then again, he thinks, as he tucks his last pair of socks into the drawer beside hers, he can’t see how it could.


	4. Female Jedi Knight/Doc

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 08| ”I know you do.”
> 
> Follows [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22207000/chapters/53021095)

He’s allowed to be there, as long as he doesn’t talk. Or fidget. Or “think too loud,” which is ridiculous. Genius should never be stifled.

He’d asked once if Jedi shouldn’t be able to meditate in the middle of a Silean Screamers concert. Just once. Got that Jedi stare back, the calm, steady one that makes you feel like you’re naked in a lecture.

(The Jedi aren’t above it all, he’s concluded, they just have less flexible faces. Force thing? Maybe he’ll study that one day.)

But today he’s here, and quiet and still and clearly not the one thinking too loud.

A twitch. An uncomfortable shift. A frustrated groan and she buries her head in her hands, folding in on herself like she’s trying to disappear into the deck.

It takes a moment to realize that she’s crying. In his defense, Jedi don’t cry, so he couldn’t have acted proactively on that one, but Doc has enough experience with the fairer sex to regroup pretty quickly. Barely notice the lapse. He’s on his knees next to her before he realizes he’s crossed the room, one hand on her broad back.

That’s as far as he’s gotten, though.

“Hey, gorgeous.”

That’s apparently the wrong angle, which he should have guessed because she’s definitely crying over him. Well, about him. Not really about him, even, he’s just the catalyst.

He settles for an awkward shoulder pat. There, there.

“Did we make a mistake?”

Doc appreciates the “we” even though he knows it means “I”. Before him, his wife had never slid a single toe out of line, and while he certainly enjoyed the romance of her full-body leap into his arms he’s always worried she’s looking back over his shoulder.

“You worried they’re going to tattle on us to the Council?”

“No.” She shakes her head, nearly dislodging the snot bubble formed over one perfect lip. She really is the most beautiful woman he’s ever known, but he’s smart enough not to make the same mistake twice in one consolation.

“Kira’s never going to let me hear the end of it. What was it she called me? ‘Master Perfect’?”

And there it is. His wife, the perfect Jedi. Follows orders, never questions, meditates for exactly 20 minutes in the exact same pose at the exact same time twice a day. Never actually timed it (file that one under “thinking too loud”) but if he did, he’s pretty sure she has it down to the exact same second, too. Every single step since she was born on the same path, until she met him and he swept her off her feet.

(Metaphorically speaking. She does most of the sweeping in their relationship and he is perfectly fine with that. More than fine, but this is not the time for that thought.)

It makes sense. Sure, he may have gone in a different direction - it would have been a shame to limit his talents to the sniffles and aches of senators and socialites - but that’s just a matter of timing. He realized he wanted more early, she realized she wanted more sometime around their hundredth cup of midnight tea.

He’s lucky. He’s honored. He hopes she doesn’t start growing a mustache.

“Pretty perfect from where I’m sitting.” This time he gets an eye roll, which is definitely an improvement.

“You know that’s not what I mean.”

“Tell me, then.” Jedi might be able to ignore their aching thighs, but Doc is more than willing to add that to the list of things they’re doing wrong, right between “no love” and “stew”. He shifts back instead, pulling her with him until she’s curled against him. Not quite comfortable (he’d rather be having this conversation on the bed instead of awkwardly leaning on it. Or not at all.) but he always finds it easier to see things in perspective when she’s closer.

“Master Satele is counting on me. They’re all counting on me, and they don’t even know I’ve-”

Fallen. She doesn’t say it but she doesn’t have to, and there it is, number one on his list of things that the Jedi have screwed up. Take a kid away from their family, tell them they shouldn’t miss them. Tell them that strong emotions are to be avoided instead of teaching them what to do with them. Tell them only that falling in love will lead to a fall into darkness and then shake their heads in disappointment when it happens. What are they expecting?

“We’ve been married for five months. Your lightsaber stop working?”

“It doesn’t work like that.”

“Because mine sure hasn’t.”

“Stop,” she says, but he can feel her smile against his neck.

“So you’re not perfect. You think they are? Guarantee you, Master Satele has some skeletons in her closet. Reads torrid romance novels. Puts cream in her caf.” He shifts her again, enough to press his lips against her forehead.

“They’re counting on you because you’re the best. Not just you. Kira, T7, Rusk, Lord No Fun…”

“You,” she supplies.

“Goes without sayin’, beautiful. And all I’m saying is that you don’t have to be perfect. When you win-”

“If I win.”

“ _When_ you win, it’ll be because you had us with you. All of us. Council doesn’t agree, well, there’s a reason you’re here and not them.”

“I suppose you’re right.” She pauses. “I can’t see you marrying Master Satele anyway.”

“You and me,” he says, twining their fingers together. “For life.”

“For life,” she replies, the words reflexive. Easy. “You and me.”

She stirs, leaves a cold spot on his side as she rises. Twenty minutes, right on the dot. That’s his girl.

Council doesn’t know how lucky they are. He can put it on the list.


	5. Female Agent/Lana Beniko

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 15 | “I thought you had forgotten.”

She wants to kiss Lana before she’s even stopped spitting the taste of carbonite out of her mouth.

It’s a familiar feeling. The agent formerly known as Cipher Nine and currently known as a poorly defrosted efficiency meal wanted to kiss Lana about five minutes after she first met her eyes across a briefing table and it’s an urge that has persisted ever since. Actually kissing her made it worse; in no way was the desire for her lips diminished but she suffered the additional indignity of quietly mooning around the ship like a schoolgirl for weeks afterwards. Even Temple noticed, which was certainly a point of pride in her training but a rather embarrassing slip for her teacher.

The quirk of her mouth. The taste of her skin. The lean muscle of her thighs and the sounds she made while Lance was set between them. Avoiding a thought only amplifies it. It’s been five years but five years doesn’t count when you didn’t live them. She’s fortunate, at least, that if Valkorion has access to the more prurient processes of her mind he has chosen not to remark on them for his own purposes.

She has not kissed her since her awakening.

Can’t, really.

Shouldn’t have to begin with.

It didn’t seem like a betrayal the first time, even though it certainly was. Rishi was an aberration, a moment in time outside of time, a kiss stolen from a woman who was at that moment Sith outside of Sith. Disavowal isn’t the same as being a double agent but on Rishi she’d been able to rationalize it. Neither of them were truly of the Empire then, after all, and Lana might have remained that way, who could know?

(There was no rationalizing Yavin, but the orgasms certainly helped.)

Then Lana was the head of Sith Intelligence and there was nothing to rationalize. Even Lokin, master of the alternate perspective, wouldn’t have managed it but if he also dreamed of kissing Lana Beniko he wisely kept it to himself. The next time she kissed her she betrayed not only an ideal but the woman herself.

Also, she kissed her boss. Interoffice romance can only end poorly, she learned that lesson from Shara.

Lana definitely isn’t her boss now - technically, Lance may be hers. She isn’t Empire anymore, as severed as herself, and Lance isn’t even entirely sure she’s still Republic enough to count. But the fact remains that no matter how much you want to kiss any particular woman (and Lance, to reiterate, still very much would like to kiss this one) you can’t build a relationship on mutual admiration and fantastic sex when you’ve poured betrayal into the duracrete foundation.

This is why, when Lana stands on the tips of her sensibly booted toes and plants one on her, it is a terrible idea to kiss her back. It is an even worse idea to kiss her again, deeper this time, pouring five years of belated passion into her mouth. To lift her off her feet and ferry them both the few steps back into the nearest bulkhead, to leave her mouth and draw her lips up that sharp jaw just because she knows that when they reach the slight dip below her ear Lana will make that sound again, the one that certainly starts something between her own thighs.

Starts something else in her brain, thankfully, which is why they don’t end up having a quick and dirty fuck in the middle of one of the Gravestone’s corridors.

“That was certainly more of a welcome,” Lana says, “I was beginning to think you didn’t remember me.” Her eyes are hooded and her breath comes heavy, and if Lance were anything other than a trained agent of superior mental fortitude she’d be halfway to her knees by now, integrity be damned.

“Lana, wait. We need to talk.”

“I apologize. I assumed too much.” The look on her face as she pulls away is almost enough to stay her tongue.

The thought of the look on her face when she discovers the truth unglues it.

“No, it’s not that.” She kisses her again, the barest brush. A final selfish betrayal. “We need to talk about my time in Intelligence.”


	6. Female Smuggler/Corso Riggs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 22 | "I know how you like to play games."

The Odessen cantina is something.

Koth has been in a lot of them over the years. Nice ones, sometimes, dives… more than sometimes. Most times, with his crew, even if nice ones are available. He’s pretty sure Tora’s been preemptively banned from every watering hole from here to Zakuul that could be labeled as “nice” and half the ones that can’t.

Not the Odessen cantina, though. They might move the good stuff (and the chairs) to somewhere a little less breakable on days like today when they see the Gravestone docking, but banning anyone is a slippery slope. Tora today, Kaliyo tomorrow, half the Alliance’s Republic and Imperial crew the next day if Kaliyo and Tora haven’t destroyed the place in retaliation by then. Theron described the cantina once as a release valve; the Commander, as usual, preferred something a little less subtle.

“We can’t call it ‘the fighting and fucking room,’” she said, “but that’s only because Lana wouldn’t let me put up the sign.”

He’s never seen her in a bar fight but after that conversation, he’s pretty sure he doesn’t want to. Not that she’s wrong - tonight will see a little of the former and a lot of the latter, no question. He’s not here for either, not even after weeks off-planet. More interested in whether she’s here too, and if so, how far into a glass she’s planning on diving tonight. Whether she wants company or whether she wants to brood.

Lately it’s been the second, and if he’s the only one worrying about it out loud it’s because Lana is too practical to mention that the only solution is the nearly impossible task of tracking down Theron Shan. That, or tracking down something even more impossible.

He finally spots her and, correction, she’s going for the third option tonight. That option’s already in progress - dreads, worn leather jacket, half-empty glass and a half-tipsy smile that clearly indicates he has no idea what he’s in for. New spacer, probably, Hylo’s always recruiting.

Poor guy.

She’s next to him at the bar, charm laid on so thick he can read it from here. Wouldn’t be a very good smuggler without it and according to everyone he’s met that knew her before the- well, _before_ \- she was one of the best. He once saw her talk Gault into lending her credits. A laugh here, a friendly grin there, a casual brush of her hand against his as she leaves to order another round. Damn impressive. He almost regrets what he’s about to do, but Koth has principles and you don’t leave a man behind when you can drag him out of firing range.

“Friend,” he says, sidling up next to him, “let me tell you how this is gonna go. She’s going to put drinks on your tab all night. Then she’s going to give you 'directions’ to her quarters. If you’re lucky, she’ll just send you to one of the maintenance closets. If you’re not…” He shrugs, eyes on the bottom of his own emptying glass. She would never actually put anyone in real danger, of course, but one time Hylo caught an overeager suitor in hanger storage with his pants already off. Better to be safe and oversell the story a little. Could be Aygo next time.

“She do that often?”

Koth is pretty sure she doesn’t have any other hobbies these days. Not a great hobby for an Alliance leader to have, to be honest, but he’s kinda worried about warning people off of this one, because who knows what she’ll choose to replace it. Bar fights. More brooding. Sleen wrestling. 

“Just a warning. For a friend.”

The man nods, raising his empty glass in a rueful toast. “Then thank you, friend.”

Right, and that would be his good deed settled for the day if she hadn’t chosen exactly that moment to pop back up at the bar beside them. Also, if his new friend hadn’t chosen to open his big damn mouth before Koth had a chance to slip back into the crowd.

“Ma'am,” the man says earnestly, “my friend…”

“Koth.” He’s probably going to regret this.

“My friend Koth here just told me that you were planning on getting me drunk and then hangin’ me out to dry. That true?”

The Commander’s gaze locks onto him and yeah, he’s going to regret this. How fast can he get the Gravestone out of the dock? Probably not fast enough.

“Now, Koth,” she drawls, “why would you try and scare him like that?”

“Hey now, I was only-” It’s way too late to throw up his hands and back away but man, does he wish it wasn’t. He should have stayed on the ship. In space, preferably.

“Here I was, enjoying a pleasant chat with one of our new recruits. Welcoming him to Odessen.” She sets down their drinks, and Koth resists the temptation to grab one and start swigging. “And you’re telling him that the Commander of the whole Eternal Alliance-” an expansive gesture, here, to the stone of the cantina ceiling, the planet above. Maybe all of Wild Space. “-Would sink so low as to pick the pocket of one of our valued partners?”

“I wouldn’t-”

“That I would betray the trust of one of our own,” she continues, “this innocent young man, barely a week off his parents’ farm-”

“Hey!”

“ _Barely a week_ ,” she says, bulldozing over the spacer’s objection. “You’re telling him I’d take advantage of my position?

"Koth, Koth, Koth. I thought we were friends.”

Tora can start destroying the cantina aaaany minute now. That’d be great.

“Are we not friends, Koth?” The downwards twist of her mouth is almost believable. Yeah, she was one of the best, alright. “Or is it something else? Were you jealous? Do you wish we were… _more_ than friends?”

Koth very much wishes the opposite, and also maybe that he’d turned down that drink from a very persuasive renegade Sith all those years ago. This won’t end well, though he’s not sure how - death, exile. Sleen wrestling.

In a million years, he wouldn’t have guessed “idiot spacer with a death wish.” The man wraps a casual arm around her waist, pulling her back to tuck his chin against her shoulder.

“Captain,” he murmurs. “You’re playing with your food.”

Koth’s brain is so busy trying to figure out which way he’s going to dive when the Commander pulls one of her blasters and shoots the guy that it takes it a minute to realize that she isn’t and the guy still has the correct amount of blaster holes.

(None, in Koth’s opinion. As someone who seems to get shot at a lot lately, he’s settled on 'none’ as a general goal.)

“So you two know each other.”

The room gets two shades brighter with her smile and he’s pretty sure that isn’t the charm this time.

“Koth Vortena, meet Corso Riggs. He’s-” Whatever she was planning on saying next is muffled against his coat as he sweeps her into a hug. A speech, probably, now that she’s already built her momentum. He doesn’t have to hear the rest of it, because he’s one of the few people on this base who knows what that name means and one of the only who knows what it’ll mean for the rest of them. All of them, not just the gullible recruits accidentally locking themselves into maintenance closets.

He hugs Corso too, just for good measure.

“I’m happy for you.” He is, and his glass is empty, which gives him the perfect opening to slide farther down the bar to motion for a new one. They probably haven’t discussed her little hobby yet. “I’ll give you two some privacy.”

Unasked, but appreciated. Earns him the genuine smile this time. The spacer’s - no, Corso’s - voice fades behind him as he moves away.

“You’re still pulling the room key scam?”

“If they fall for that, farmboy, they’re too dumb for my army.”

The clink of two glasses. A pressure valve releasing.

Then Tora flips a table and the night really gets started.


	7. Female Sith Warrior/Malavai Quinn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 23 | "This is not new, it only feels like it."

She realizes, after nearly a decade of marriage, that she is in love with her husband. She’s watching him at the mirror, half dressed after shaving, worrying at the patches of gray that are starting to feather at his temples. He’s turning his head this way and that and she can almost hear him. She laughs quietly, more of a chuckle than anything, but it startles him.

“My lord?”

“I love you, Malavai.” For a moment, he looks even more confused. Just for a moment, though.

“And I you.”

How long has he loved her? Has he always loved her?

She has long since dismissed the idea that he had seduced her as a ploy to win Baras’ favor. Her husband, despite some very specific evidence to the contrary, pledges his loyalty absolutely. When he said he loved her, all of those times he said it, quietly and fervently and reverently; whispered against her shoulder as they fell asleep and gasped as her hand wrapped around his throat in an abandoned transponder station, he meant it.

She hadn’t. Not really. Not the way she means it now. Not out of insincerity or malice, but simply a limitation of her understanding of the term. She was a Sith from a long line of Sith; she needed a husband of fine quality but insufficient leverage to challenge her position. She never hurt him, never flaunted affairs with others. Her only punishment for his betrayal was a year of exile from her side, and even at her haughtiest she knew this to be a punishment not quite as threatening as death or dismemberment.

Malavai had been a talented officer with a bright future under her patronage, a brilliant mind in a pleasing package. Her heir, when she decided to produce one, would be perfect. He was a loyal servant, a gifted adviser, a satisfying lover. His ambition was to best serve her own. At the time, that was adequate. That was love, as complete as she could imagine it.

Many things have changed.

“I love you,” she says over dinner, and this time it earns her two odd looks, one from the dutiful husband, one from the perfect heir. Their daughter is so like him, even down to the tilt of her head, that it makes her love him more.

So she practices, because she likes the feeling. It’s a giddy thrill, a secret she’s been keeping since she saw him again for the first time on Iokath and understood that a part of her had been absent and was now returned. She slips her hand into his as they walk down the corridor to a briefing, she whispers it into the crook of his arm as they fall asleep. Tries it on, sincerely and indulgently and urgently.

“My lord,” he says, clearing his throat nervously. They’re comfortably between meetings, breakfast dishes off the table and a child shooed off to her tutors. “Is there something wrong?”

“No.” Then, because she can and because it’s true, “I love you.”


End file.
